Ribbons
by Aoitori
Summary: [after Ch 133] Upon receiving a strange premonition, Tomoyo decides to seek the aid of the dimensional witch. But what will she find? And, even then, what can she do? Please read and review!
1. Four Days

Disclaimer: I do not own the characters, worlds, or ideas of Tsubasa Reservoir Chronicle, nor do I wish to.

_Author's Note: This brief episode takes place more or less directly after chapter 133 of the manga. As such, it refers to events that may be considered SPOILER-tastic to those who are not current with the manga. But as this is a rather vague, overdramatized and philosophical episode, such references are few and may be easily overlooked. In any case, read and review—onegashimasu! (bows)_

Ribbons

**Chapter 1: Four days**

It had been four days since Kurogane left.

Four days.

It seemed like an eternity.

The princess Tomoyo sat serenely as her attendants dressed her and adorned her hair with the customary decorations. Her tiny sigh was the only evidence that as she sat, her heart went out to her ninja for the hundredth time that morning.

_Was he safe?_ she wondered.

_Was he getting along with his companions? _

_And, most importantly—had he forgiven her for sending him away?_

"Hime-sama…?" The voice of Sayo, one of the attendants, interrupted her reverie.

"Milady," she said, offering something to Tomoyo with her hands out and her head bowed. "I'm sorry milady but we can't find the mate to this ribbon…"

Tomoyo stared at the proffered ribbon. It was merely a long, plain hair ribbon, tinted a delicate lavender. She was fairly sure she had several dozen like it. Musing over the obsessive nature of her handmaidens she absently reached over to take the ribbon, but even as her hand brushed the cool silk cloth she shuddered, and a chill ran down her spine. Her consciousness was suddenly filled with anguish and despair that were not her own. She took a gasping breath as she steeled herself against the emotional torrent, trying at once to find its source.

And find it she did.

"Stop." she commanded the attendants in a tone that brooked no argument. They fairly froze in place, not daring an inquiry as to her strange behavior. The priestess-princess rose and walked with perfunctory grace to the inoriba. It only took a few minutes to complete the preparations and perform the rite. Then she stood before the hazy image of the dimensional witch.


	2. Taika

**Chapter 2: Taika**

Yuuko had just finished making her explanations to Syaoran's group after accepting Sakura-hime's hard won taika. It had been unpleasant to see her time-traveling group in such a pitiful state. But she was neither surprised nor pleased when a purplish cloud materialized next to her at eye-level and swirled to reveal the strangely unadorned face of princess Tomoyo.

"Well," said Yuuko with her customary sarcasm, "To what do I owe this honor?"

"Yuuko-san." The princess bowed gracefully and neither the lack of jewels nor the forced smile made her appear any less the princess that she was. "I wish to see Kurogane."

Yuuko's countenance darkened. She had been expecting the question, but it was still disagreeable. "You will not like what you see." She said very plainly.

The princess let out a pained laugh. "Yuuko-san!" she chided, "You said that he travels through different times and dimensions."

The dimensional witch nodded.

"And if that is the case, his 'now' and my 'now' no longer coincide."

Yuuko raised an eyebrow. The young girl was more perceptive than she'd given her credit for. "This is true," she answered.

"So when I ask you to show him to me, you could show me any moment he experiences in any world and it would be equally 'now'?"

"Indeed."

"So why would you show me something I don't want to see?"

Yuuko smiled in earnest. "A fair question." She said. "You see, in a distant place and time Kurogane's soul is reaching for yours and for reasons known only to me, that call reached you about five minutes ago in your own time and place. The connection that has been made, tenuous though it is at best, is enough to prevent me from showing you any time except that time. So again I warn you—you will not like what you see. Furthermore, you will not like the taika."

The princess sat and thought for a moment. Yuuko knew it was a foregone conclusion but, then again, her patience _was_ truly infinite. "I still wish to see him." Tomoyo said at last. "I will pay the taika, whatever it is, because he needs me."

"Very well," said Yuuko with a shrug. "That ribbon then, hand it over." She said, pointing to Tomoyo's left hand.

The princess looked down in surprise. Indeed, trailing from her clenched fist was the long purple ribbon that Sayo had given her. "This?" she asked incredulously, "How could this…" she began, but Yuuko silenced her with a wave of her fan.

"You'll understand in a moment," the witch said shortly.

Still wearing a prim frown, Tomoyo-hime raised the ribbon before the cloudy image of the dimensional witch. In a moment, there was a strange humm, then a pop, and then the ribbon lay not in the princess's hand but between Yuuko's long fingers.

"Now," said the witch, "Look to the mirror at your left and your wish, such as it is, will be granted."

Eagerly, but with a twinge of foreboding, Tomoyo turned to look upon the mirror.


	3. Facade

**Chapter 3: Façade**

His face!

The princess's heart leapt to her throat as the dark features of her ninja filled the mirror in front of her and she realized just how much she had missed him. Her joy was short lived, however, as closer scrutiny replaced it with horror at the things she read in his face. To the untrained eye, his expression was nothing more than the grim, stolid mask that he almost always displayed, but to Tomoyo it was an open book, the contents of which frightened her.

Pain.

Physical and emotional, it was the foremost emotion betrayed by his countenance. He was hurting fiercely, and ignoring that pain just as fiercely. His companions must be in the room with him, she decided, for him to be so determined to keep up the façade. Almost in answer to that thought, the view of the mirror swept back several feet so she could see the scene playing out before her.

The blond haired man with one eye was cradling the head of an injured young girl in his lap. Kurogane was looking at the two of them most intently and for the girl his gaze held pride and concern. As he looked at the man, Tomoyo could read a mixture of genuine anger and compassion in his eyes. Briefly, Kurogane inclined his head fractionally to the left to keep an eye on the young man cloaked in white. He hovered near the other two, seemingly unsure as to his position in the situation. Kurogane regarded the boy with nothing more than vague suspicion. Though Tomoyo knew little of her ninja's three companions, it was plain to see that something had just gone terribly wrong between them. Another unfamiliar individual arrived with a bag of what even Tomoyo considered to be woefully inadequate medical supplies and began to help the blond man treat the girl's injuries. Kurogane seemed satisfied to see this happening and, with a brief word to the others, made to leave the room.

He turned just slightly more slowly than he ought to have, and that alone should have been warning enough for Tomoyo-hime but, caught up in speculation, she missed the clues and was thus utterly shocked at what she saw when he moved to face away from the mirror's veiw.

His back! The once white shirt was stained and encrusted with more blood that it seemed possible for one man to spare, and slashes and burns had reduced it to mere tatters. Sympathetic pain froze Tomoyo in place as horror wrenched her stomach in its cold grip. To be sure, she'd seen him injured before, and perhaps more gravely, but to watch his pain while remaining powerless to assuage it…was utter torture.


	4. Ribbon

**Chapter 4:The Ribbon**

Tomoyo watched helplessly as Kurogane walked slowly down an empty corridor and picked a room. What the room had been, Tomoyo couldn't quite tell. It had been stripped of anything remotely useful and all that remained was an old mattress on a rickety frame.

Kurogane turned around to lock the door and, when he turned back, his face, now visible to Tomoyo again, was so changed that it was nearly unrecognizable. In his moment of privacy the ninja had dropped his customary mask of grim disapproval and now his face showed clearly his exhaustion, even his dismay. As he walked toward the bed he gave a seemed to give a long sigh and gingerly he raised one arm in an attempt to touch his back. A quick grimace showed that the effort was not worth the pain and he did not give it a second try. Instead he sat down on the edge of the bed, testing its sturdiness as he did and then easing onto it further. Then, he leaned forward with elbows on his knees and cupped his forehead in one big hand, exhaling in what was half a sigh and half a groan.

Suddenly he seemed to remember something and he stiffly put his hand to a concealed pocket at his chest and withdrew something. For a moment, as she watched him unfold it, Tomoyo-hime couldn't begin to guess at what it might be, but just as she was thinking of asking Yuuko-san, the princess recognized the pale purple cloth, despite the spots of grim and blood that marred it. "My ribbon!" she exclaimed without thinking, and instantly looked to her hand which must have, just moments ago, held the mate to that ribbon.

Empty.

Of course.

The terrible reality hit her all at once and she looked to Yuuko, who still held the taika.

Yuuko saw the princess's anguished face and turned away with practiced indifference.

And the princess understood that she had been warned.

So Tomoyo had no choice but look upon her broken ninja once more.

Kurogane took the ribbon in his hands and held it with such tenderness that it might have been a fragile butterfly. He gazed at it intently, hands trembling slightly, and a myriad of emotions crossed his now open face: longing, suffering, desire, resignation, and anger, even fear. One memento sparked such a vivid array of feelings in him that it was a wonder he didn't fling the troublesome object away from him.

But instead he slowly, gently raised the tattered ribbon to his face. "Tomoyo-hime." Her heart twisted in agony as she saw his lips form her name. And, hands clenched now, he bowed his head over the ribbon like a man in mourning. Though Tomoyo would never quite be sure, she thought she saw a single tear fall to the ground at his feet. And she realized that her own tears were flowing freely.

The ninja stayed in that position for what seemed like hours; apparently his very evident exhaustion had claimed his consciousness and he slept as he was.

The princess watched over him without so much as blinking.

Then, with no warning whatsoever, he looked up towards the door at what must have been the sound of someone knocking. Gently he folded the ribbon once again and tucked it away in its hiding place. He rose with apparent effort and approached the door. The instant he touched its handle his mask was back, and his face no longer showed anything but general annoyance and ill temper to the casual observer. He opened the door and nodded to whoever had knocked, then he proceeded outside and beyond Tomoyo's range of vision. Whatever magic Yuuko had used on the mirror ceased to follow him any further and the mirror now showed Tomoyo nothing more than her own tear stained face.


	5. Hitsuzen

**Chapter 5: Hitsuzen**

Tomoyo stood facing the mirror for a long moment, collecting the remaining shreds of her composure before finally turning to confront the dimensional witch once more.

"Yuuko-san." She said slowly, testing herself. "Wh…" her voice caught in her throat when she saw the witch twirling the ribbon lazily through the air as if to say _I told you so._ "Why that ribbon?" She finished the question.

Yuuko snatched the ribbon mid-air and gazed at it spread out between her hands. "Well the answer is obvious." She replied with an undue note of cruelty in her voice. "This ribbon serves as a focal point of communication spanning both space and time (in fairly significant quantities, you might be interested to know) and, as such, it is now a pricelessly powerful object. In fact, no artifact that you or you sister possess is its equal in magical power. Thus it is the only possible payment you could give me for facilitating a similarly expansive communication."

"But," the princess tried to object but was cut off.

"And there is one more answer." Yuuko flicked up her long index finger for emphasis. "That it was…and is… Hitsuzen."

That word again.

The princess knew now that it was by that same Hitsuzen that she had Kurogane off in the first place. Her eyes narrowed, "Then Hitsuzen" she said in a low but decisive manner, "is terribly cruel…"

"Hahahahaha!" exclaimed the witch in a loud, mocking laugh that held more than a little of it's own measure of pain. Then in a surprisingly cool voice: "That is infinitely more and less true than you can possibly imagine."


	6. Causality

**Chapter 6: Causality**

Tomoyo gave that thought a moment's silent consideration, before continuing in a more subdued tone. "So then, is there nothing more I can do for him? Now that that one small comfort has been taken away?"

Yuuko looked at her sharply, "You offer prayers for him every day, don't you?"

The princess was taken slightly aback by the question. "Yes…of course. I always have." She answered, not sure what the dimensional witch was driving at.

"Then you are already making the best effort you can on his behalf."

This time it was Tomoyo's turn to offer up a bitter laugh, "You know," she said, with a fresh tear beading up at the corner of her eye, "Kurogane's mother did that too. He told me once. She offered prayers for her husband, prayers for their village…every day. And do you know what happened…?" She looked down, again trying to collect herself.

"I do." Answered the witch, with unusual solemnity.

"And I suppose that, too, was your…Hitsuzen?!" Tomoyo accused, misdirected anger welling up in her voice.

Yuuko merely nodded.

"Then what were her prayers worth!?" she demanded, "What are MY prayers worth?"

Yuuko just looked at the princess for several moments. She did not lack an answer, but it was necessary for her chose carefully how to express it. As was always the case, she must take painstaking care not to reveal too much, nor to little.

"Let me ask you this:" she said, at last, "if it is a man's destiny to kill someone, does that make him any less a murderer?"

"No…" the princess answered slowly.

"Then if it is a girl's destiny to save someone, does that make her any less his savior?"

The princess frowned.

"You see," Yuuko went on, "Hitsuzen is merely a concept that describes the state of all matter in the universes; past, present, and future. Hitsuzen is how things were, are, and will be. But it is not _why_. You, with every choice and decision you make, create the "_why._"

Tomoyo nodded, though the look on her face showed the effort it took her to conceptualize 4-dimensional reality.

Again the witch waited, till her supplicant was ready to hear. "Your prayers may, in fact, be the reason for his survival; the cause, as it were, of his salvation. And eventually—his return."

Slowly, understanding was creeping into Tomoyo's expression.

"Know, then, that the value of this ribbon," Yuuko displayed the coveted object one last time, "pales in comparison to the power of your prayers."

Something akin to peace settled at last on the princess's countenance. "Thank you, Yuuko-san." She said wistfully, before bowing deeply to the now wavering figure of the dimensional witch. The spell by which they were talking was dissipating and neither of them made a move to re-cast it.

"I _will_ do my best." promised the princess.

And she thought she saw the witch, that hedonistic executor of Hitsuzen, reply with a genuine smile.

But it could have been a trick of the light.

_Fin_


End file.
